Canceling In-Flight Requests with Axios
Explore how to manage fast, overlapping network requests in React apps by implementing request cancellation with Axios and AbortController. Understand race conditions, prevent stale UI updates, and improve performance by aborting obsolete requests. You'll also apply this by creating a type-to-search feature that efficiently handles quick user input and learn to add manual cancellation controls.
In dynamic interfaces like search bars or dashboards, rapid user input can trigger a cascade of network requests before previous ones complete. For instance, as a user types "React," the app might request results for "R," then "Re," and "Rea" in quick succession. Without a cancellation strategy, a race condition can occur: a slower, obsolete response might arrive after a newer one, overwriting the UI with stale data. This flood of redundant requests also wastes bandwidth and degrades application performance, leading to an inconsistent and sluggish user experience. That’s where request cancellation comes in. Instead of letting every request run to completion, we can abort unnecessary requests as soon as they’re no longer needed
Why canceling requests matters
When dealing with fast user interactions or multiple state changes, it’s easy for overlapping network requests to get out of sync. Consider two requests:
Request A: Triggered ...